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Beyond the candy, pumpkins and booze Halloween is a very important holiday.

Halloween reminds us that God is the author of both good and evil.

The greatest challenge of monotheism, which is the belief in just one God, is explaining the origins of evil. The philosopher playwright Archibald MacLeish in his free-verse play “J.B.”, which is a modern interpretation of the Book of Job, puts the theological problem of evil and God in the mouth of the Satan figure, “If God is great, he is not good. If God is good, he is not God. Take the even, take the odd.” So the choice is between a powerful God who is not good and an impotent God who is good but not powerful. How do we escape this dilemma?

The solution begins with understanding the nature of evil.

The first kind of evil is moral evil. Moral evil is the evil we humans do to each other by our free will. God has given us the freedom to choose our actions in the world and sometimes we choose badly. Our sinful failings bring evil into the world. We are the origins of moral evil not God and so God is off the moral hook.

The second kind of evil in the world is natural evil. This is the evil caused by natural events like hurricanes and earthquakes and diseases. We have no role in their origins and no responsibility for their disastrous effects. Natural evil is a byproduct of the world God has created and thus is the responsibility of the Creator God.

One defense of God’s role in natural evil is that such events are not truly evil. Earthquakes and similar phenomena are consequences of a dynamic, living planet that produces fissures and other geological burping as a result of its molten core that is necessary to produce our atmosphere and our lives on this glorious green-and-blue globe. If we choose to build houses on fault lines and on the shores of volatile oceans it is not God’s fault.

So the result of these defenses for an all-powerful and all-good God is that evil is either our fault or the result of the natural effects of living on planet earth. The problem with this is that it does not address our grief. When we suffer we look to God for protection and solace and we ask why we have been punished. The reality of evil demands something more than dry theological arguments that make victims of evil also responsible in some way or another for the evil that has beset them. This is both cruel and unhelpful.

This is where the Halloween solution enters in. What Halloween offers us is a more frightening but more honest view of evil in the world. The solution is the hordes of ghouls and goblins and ghosts and vampires that haunt our world and, to put things mildly, do not wish us well. They are forces of evil that have been unleashed on the world to torment us. Of course, they are all created by the one God and so faith and prayer (and perhaps some garlic) offer us some protection from their predations. To quote the famous Scottish/Cornish prayer/poem:

From ghoulies and ghosties and long-leggedy beasties,

And things that go bump in the night,

Good Lord, deliver us!

The theological question still remains. Why would God create and unleash this spooky army into the world? One possibility is that none of the things that go bump in the night are real. They are just childhood fears given shape. I can’t buy that answer. There is just too much evidence that we share this world with beings that are not dreamt of in our philosophies, Horatio.

My attraction to the Halloween solution to the problem of evil comes from the great prophet Isaiah. In what is absolutely his most challenging and dramatic prophecy he speaks in God’s name: "I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lord do all these things." (Isaiah 45:7).

The meaning of Isaiah’s teaching to me is that our faith must embrace a God who both gives and takes. A God who both gives life and takes life away. At every Jewish funeral we say, “God has given and God has taken away. Blessed be the name of the Lord.” It is just too easy and too facile to pray to a God who only gives you blessings. Life is full of blessings to be sure and those blessings come from God, but life is also full of burdens and fears and God has placed them as well into every single life. A God of everything is far more attractive to me than just a God of gifts.

Happy Halloween!

(Send ALL QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS to The God Squad via email at godsquadquestion@aol.com. Rabbi Gellman is the author of several books, including “Religion for Dummies,” co-written with Fr. Tom Hartman. Also, the new God Squad podcast is now available.)

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